Doug has been gone a little over a week. It honestly feels like a hundred years. I can’t write about him. Not yet. A tribute to Doug deserves grace and gratitude. All I feel right now is burning heartache. But I do want to write a little about grief. To normalize being heartbroken over a dog. 

There are days I can’t stop crying. I’m crying right now. My first day back to work, I spent most of the day crying in my office. I also cried in the bathroom. And in the elevator. I cried so much I made other people cry. I can’t drive with music on. I can somehow make every song about Doug. I was sobbing at a traffic light and looked over to the car next to me and a woman mouthed: I’m sorry. She gets it. I sleep with Doug’s ashes next to me and his harness clutched in my hands. He’s in a giant wooden box that cuts into my chest. If I wake up in the middle of the night for any reason (probably because of the giant wooden box in my bed), I am officially up for the rest of the day and crying because it’s another day without Doug. Doug’s box is bigger than Melvin‘s was. I’m not good at ashes math, but I really don’t see how that’s possible. But I am 100% certain it’s Doug, and here’s why. Doug had two extensive leg surgeries. His legs were a lot of hardware. That hardware came back to me with his ashes. A bag of screws and bolts and plates. There were bits of bone still stuck to the screws. I’m not sure what to do with that. Just one of the million things that makes no sense to me anymore. Like living without Doug. 

My schedule, was Doug. My internal clock is still set to Doug. My Olympic gold would be won in checking the camera to see how Doug is doing when I’m away from him. I am alarmed at how many times during the day I unknowingly pick up my phone to look at those cameras. I truly was his stalker. I still am. But he’s not there anymore.   

I cleaned out the refrigerator. It was full of food that I bought to try and get Doug to eat. There were three Wendy’s cheeseburgers. I sobbed on the floor after I put them in the trash. I may have to navigate my entire life around never seeing a Wendy’s again. 

The first few days I couldn’t be anywhere in my house. Why would I be in a room without Doug? But I also didn’t want to leave the house. I’m a homebody. Doug is my home. His stuff is still out. It’s not bothering anyone. If it was bothering someone, I would just tell that person to leave. The runways are still down. Those will be the hardest for me. I worry taking them up suggests they were in the way. But he was never a burden. 

I had promised Doug that if he stopped eating again, I would not get frantic and try force feed him. He stopped eating again. I thought about how easy it would be to say F it, you have to eat. But Doug had made the decision to stop doing the thing that he loved the most, twice in the past few months. This wasn’t a blip. This wasn’t something I could fix. He was tired. His light was dimming. He was asking me to stay true to my promise that I made to him on the very first day we met and said hello. That I would measure his life in joy, not time, and that I would never waiver on that promise. I tried to bargain some years off my life to give Doug more time. Apparently my request was denied. There was so much more life I wanted to live with him. There were a million more moments I wanted to just be present with him. There was so much more love. Me and him and our simple, beautiful life. 

I will end this post with the best piece of grief advice I’ve ever gotten: you don’t ever have to get over this loss. 

I don’t ever have to get over losing Doug. I couldn’t if I tried.